I think I can let the cat out of the bag now. My parents are joining us for Christmas this year! They are serious about their traveling. Hence they left at 2:30 in the morning so they could drive for about 14 hours in one day. They have stopped for the night and will be here around lunch time tomorrow. To say that I’m excited would be an understatement. The boys know nothing about them coming. It has been so hard keeping the secret, but the secret is safe. Just before they get here we’ll send the boys to DW’s mom’s (three house up the street). We got a refrigerator box to wrap with Christmas paper to hide them in to surprise the boys. I can’t wait to see their reaction. You will get to read all about to tomorrow. There will be video, too. Now to get these questions done and get a bit more cleaning done!

Whoo Hooo!!

1. How can you tell if two people are married?

Crash: If the girl has a ring or you catch them kissing. Actually, no, they may not be married.
Bang: I hear a big kiss happen… it’s really loud

2. What do mom and dad have in common?

Crash: You both fart, have glasses and Fitbits
Bang: You both have really hairy legs and you both wear jeans a lot

3. When is okay to kiss someone?

Crash: Either at a marriage or anytime after that or shortly before that
Bang: When you’re getting married or under a mistletoe

4. How do you make a marriage work?

Crash: Don’t make your gf/bf angry before you’re married because then it’ll be cancelled
Bang: Just like them and want to live with them forever

Crash: Because you love her and she’s a good helper and looked like she would get her kids to do stuff.
Bang: Because you were both pretty

8. Why did Mom marry Dad?

Crash: Because she loved you and you were funny and cool
Bang: Because she thinks you’re handome

9. What’s the funniest thing that you have ever done?

Crash: At school yesterday there was a sing-a-long with Christmas songs with a teacher who could play guitar and we made a remix and it was funny
Bang: I drank mom’s really thick, gross coffee milk (35% heavy whipping cream)

10. What is something we should do over Christmas break?

Crash: Go sledding and use my skis for my scooter
Bang: Build an igloo if there is snow

So much can be said for a good pair of socks. Like people, they come in so many varieties. All the colors of the world. Short, tall, and every size in between. Some are fuzzy. Some aren’t. Some are thick and some are thin. There are thermal socks to keep you warm and barely there socks to keep you cool. There are even socks with capes.

Anyone who knows me even a little bit, knows I love socks. I’ve never met a pair socks I won’t wear. Stripes or polka dots. Adorned with candy canes or cows. Toe socks that fit like a glove. To me, there is no such thing as an ugly pair of socks.

They are down there tucked into shoes and covered by the legs of jeans and yoga pants minding their own business. They keep us from getting blisters. They sacrifice themselves all in the name of our health. Sometimes they get holes. Sometimes they stink.

Many times they lose their mate in the wash. Poor things with no sole mate. It’s heartbreaking. However, if you enjoy mismatched socks, your socks are never without a mate. There’s someone for everyone.

Sometimes a pair of socks comes into your life and you just know they are going to be in your life for a long time. They are strong socks. They feel good in your hands and even better on your feet. They are like the comfort of a best friend.

If you caught my post last year, Life’s Too Short to Waste Time Matching Socks, you know that I don’t believe in matching socks. A sock company from Sweden found that post and sent me a pair of their socks. They asked me if they could send me socks! For free! (if I wrote about them). The only thing better than socks are free socks.

I must say I was a bit skeptical at first. However, they shipped right away and ten days later I had my first pair of socks from Sockamore. After browsing their colorful website, I was expecting something funky. Especially, since the post they saw had me wearing knee high mismatched socks – one striped, one polka dotted. The socks they sent were of your basic variety. Black with some multi-colored stripes. I can dress them up. I can dress them down. What caught my attention (and DW’s) was the feel of them. They feel well made. I highly doubt I’ll wear through them any time soon. It’s a great way to add a little bit of flair to an outfit. Check out Socamore, they amore socks way amore than me. Pick out a couple pair while you’re there so you can mismatch them. Life’s too short to spend time matching socks.

Woody and Elfis, like most days, spent the day hanging out. Today they were literally hanging out. They set up a zipline and had some fun in the kitchen zipping back and forth. They performed a few tricks for us, too.

Over a pair of aces, of course. The best kind of war. When we woke this morning we found the game in progress. Woody had just flipped his card over to reveal his ace.

The next time we saw them, they had laid their three cards down. Elfis flipped a 7, but Woody hadn’t flipped his fourth card over, yet. We didn’t know who was going to win!

This evening we saw them and it appears Elfis won the war as Woody had a four. Poor Woody lost his ace in that battle. You can see he wasn’t too happy about it, either. He threw a temper tantrum! While we got to see who won the Battle of the Aces, we don’t know who won the war.

You don’t need a calendar to know that Christmas is approaching. There are Christmas decorations and Christmas baking. There are Christmas concerts, Christmas parties, Christmas shopping, Christmas songs, Christmas sweaters and Christmas socks. There are also kids (and dads) around the world bouncing off the walls, quite literally, with excitement. There are also Christmas questions…

1. Why is everything purple?

Once upon a time purple was Bang favorite color. He had purple shorts and purple shoes. He loved to color with the purple crayon. We could have named him Harold (bonus points if you know Harold and his purple crayon). The answer to everything being purple isn’t because of a crayon, though. Thank God. Purple is color of everything churchy these days. It is the color of advent (and lent). In the Catholic church purple is the sign of penance, sacrifice and preparation. Purple is also the color of royalty and wealth as it was once very expensive to produce. In the story of Jesus a purple cloak was draped over his bleeding shoulders to mock him as a king.

2. How do ships know how deep the water is?

Did you hear about the paddle sale at the boat store? I heard it was quite an oar deal! Boats know the depth using sound waves (a lot like ocean waves except smaller, invisible and made of sound). Since we know the speed of sound through water (roughly the same speed Christmas morning will be over), we can determine how far it travelled before being bounced back. There’s a lot of science involved, but all you need to know is the material’s density, compressibility and temperature. We know all this about the ocean, so a ship’s sonar bounces sound waves off the bottom of the ocean and measures how long it took the echo to return and presto bango, you know the depth.

3. How much does the Earth weigh?

Nevermind the Earth for a minute. A butcher is 6 feet tall with blue eyes. What does he weigh? Meat. He weighs meat! Now imagine if you had a scale big enough to set the Earth on, how much would the Earth weigh? Nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch. It’s weightless in the near vacuum of space. However, using math, science, the laws of gravity, fancy formulas and figuring the densities of the various materials we know the Earth weighs 1.31668×1025 lbs. For those of you who aren’t quite sure what that means, its 13,166,800,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds. Say it with me: 13 septillion 166 sextillion 800 quintillion pounds. It also happens to be the same weight of all the junk food I plan on eating over the next two weeks…

4. You had TV when you were a kid?

First, the backstory. The boys are into this cartoon called “Teen Titans, Go!”. Apparently it’s based on a 2003 show that is based on an ’80’s comic book. In this show, Robin, Raven, Starfire, Beastboy, and Cyborg battle numerous “bad guys”. In one of the episodes they revisited the old ’80’s Robin cartoon and children we’re witness to watch TV animation used to be. This question arose when I informed the boys that that was what my cartoons looked like when I was their age. Yes, heathen, I had TV in the 80’s. TV was actually available in crude, experimental form in the late 1920. It became widely popular after improved black and white broadcasting became available after WWII and during the 1950’s. The first televised sitcom (according to Wikipedia) was Mary Kay and Johnny in 1948. The first televised football game occurred 9 years prior in 1939 by NBC. It was a college game Waynesburg vs. Fordham and it’s estimated that it reach about a thousand television sets (scientifically that’s 1×10^3). That’s how many M&M’s I can fit in my belly. In case you were wondering, the Fordham Rams won 34-7.

You see, I bought some shortbread cookies loaded with green icing and sprinkles. They were for dessert after supper. Our mistake? We opened them in front of Woody and Elfis. This morning we found the two of them in the cupboard enjoying the sweet treats. Fortunately, they just shared a cookie. They split one between them. They went halvsies.

If you recall two days ago, Elfis captured Woody under a glass and held him trapped all day. Woody said he’d have his revenge. He is true to his little elf word.

We woke this morning to see a trap set and Woody waiting patiently under the tree for his prey. He used a candy cande and white chocolate peppermint M&M’s for bait. Elves are suckers for peppermint.

Elfis hung out on the elf that Bang drew and colored and taped to the wall. His holder is meant for cookies Christmas Eve for when the Jolly Elf stops by. From here Elfis could clearly see his intended target. However, this morning, it worked as a perfect perch for Elfis.

*You can just make out Little Snowball at floor level. He’s to hold Santa’s milk.

Elfis’s will power began to break down through the day. When we returned home from school, Woody hadn’t caught him yet. However, Elfis was only feet away from the sweet treats. He was eyeing them long and hard while Woody continued to lay and wait.

After spending all day staring at the delicious treats, Elfis apparently decided that being caught was worth the sacrifice for a candy cane and peppermint M&M’s. I agree, too. I would have been caught LONG before now. Bang was in the kitchen when he heard the bowl come crashing down and he came running. Naturally, DW and I didn’t see them move as we were each playing a game on our phone (DW was crushing candy and I was finding words in my soup).

With just 10 sleeps left, I hope they start playing nicer. I doubt Santa will be impressed that they are setting traps for one another. Or perhaps, being a right jolly old elf himself, he finds it quite amusing.